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The Enneagram

Article  in  Aries · January 2020

DOI: 10.1163/15700593-02001002

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The Enneagram: G. I. Gurdjieff’s Esoteric Symbol *

Carole M. Cusack
University of Sydney
carole.cusack@sydney.edu.au

Abstract

The Enneagram, from the Greek ennea (nine) and grammos (written or drawn),
is a nine-sided figure, presented as a triangle within a circle (connecting points 9,
3 and 6), that was taught by the esoteric teacher G. I. Gurdjieff and discussed in P.
D. Ouspensky’s In Search of the Miraculous (1949). Gurdjieff stated that the
Enneagram is “completely self-supporting and independent of other lines and it
has been completely unknown up to the present time,”1 yet multiple origins have
been claimed for the symbol (e.g., Christian, Sufi, Kabbalistic).2 This article
situates the Enneagram in the Work context, and considers the post-Gurdjieffian
Enneagram, which is chiefly used for personality analysis (indebted to Oscar
Ichazo, founder of the Arica School).

Keywords

G. I. Gurdjieff – Enneagram – Oscar Ichazo – esotericism – P. D. Ouspensky

Introduction

The esoteric system of spiritual development taught by the Greek-Armenian
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (c. 1866-1949) is based on two fundamental laws, the
Law of Seven (Heptaparaparshinokh) and the Law of Three (Triamazikamno).
The Law of Seven is related to the musical octave, which underpins Gurdjieff’s
teaching in various ways: there are seven levels of energy; seven distinct
cosmoses; and the Ray of Creation has seven emanations. James Moore explained
the Law of Seven as follows;

[e]very completing process must without exception have seven discrete
phases: construing these as an ascending or descending series of seven
notes or pitches, the frequency of vibrations must develop irregularly, with
two predictable deviations (just where semi-tones are missing between Mi-
Fa and Si-Do in the untempered modern major scale EDCBAGFE.3

The Law of Three posits three forces, positive, negative and reconciling, or
neutralizing: “[t]he higher blends with the lower to actualize the middle, which
becomes higher or the preceding lower and lower for the succeeding higher.”4
These forces are termed affirming, denying, and reconciling in Gurdjieff’s

* Thanks are due to my research assistants Drs Johanna Petsche and Venetia Robertson.
1 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 286.
2 Webb, The Harmonious Circle, 505-519.
3 Moore, Gurdjieff, 45. See also Wellbeloved, Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts, 116-119.
4 Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, 751.
writings. Both laws are synthesized and expressed in the Enneagram.5

Gurdjieff taught that humans are beings with three centres (physical, emotional,
and intellectual), in a universe constituted of energies, in which existing things
strive to reach the next level. Humans are mechanical and destined to become
food for the moon, which requires energy to progress to the next stage of
development, an earth. To escape this fate, humans must align their three selves
into a unified whole and develop higher-being bodies, beyond the physical body.
Gurdjieff called the first of these the kesdjan body.6 Three types of nutrients,
food, air and impressions, absorbed by the three centres, may assist in the
development of the kesdjan body, if properly received. The way of the fakir (Sufi
ascetic) addresses the body and the sensory centre, the way of the monk
(Christian ascetic) addresses the emotional centre, and the way of the yogi
(Hindu ascetic) addresses the intellectual centre; these paths are partial and
inadequate. They “are all imbalanced because each centre is only aware of part of
what we are … So in effect, there are two kinds of imbalance … individual
neurosis (derived from the fact that centres try to do the work that is proper to
one of the others) and ‘spiritual lopsidedness’ (derived from the fact that no
centre can reveal the whole nature of man).”7 Gurdjieff’s teachings, the ‘Fourth
Way’, address the whole person.

Those in the Work usually insist the Gurdjieffian Enneagram is not a tool for
personality diagnosis (or spiritual health), but the original application of the
Enneagram (a model of the Laws of Three and Seven, and of the ways in which
food, air and impressions are absorbed into the body, assisting to develop higher
bodies) is broadly compatible with the self-development model of those who
employ the Enneagram outside the Work. These teachers have introduced the
Enneagram to new audiences, esoteric and exoteric, that are open to such
diagnostic models and the promise of psychological optimisation and self-
transformation they offer.8

Gurdjieff and Esoteric Self-Transformation

5 Moore, Gurdjieff, 344-345.

6 Wellbeloved, Gurdjieff: The Key Concepts, 27-29. Gurdjieff taught that there were four

bodies. The first is the physical (organic) body. Second is the kesdjan or astral body, the
first ‘higher’ body. Third and fourth are the mental body and the causal body. The
acquisition of the last is akin to having a soul as the individual will survive bodily death.
7 Rawlinson, The Book of the Enlightened Masters, 288.
8 Helen Palmer, for example, was taught the Enneagram by Kathleen Riordan Speeth, the

Gurdjieffian sometime lover of Claudio Naranjo. Palmer co-founded the Enneagram

Professional Training Program (EPTP), and focused her teaching on success in the
workplace and family and romantic relationships. Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson
state that the “ultimate purpose of the Enneagram is to help each of us become a fully
functioning person. It helps us to see ourselves more clearly so that we can become
better balanced and integrated individuals … we must rise to the tremendous challenge
of becoming, and being, fully human. When you transcend yourself, the fact will be
confirmed by the quality of your life. You will attain – even if only momentarily – a
transparency and a radiance of being, which result from living both within and beyond
yourself. This is the promise and the excitement of self-understanding,” Riso and
Hudson, Personality Types, 54-55.

The development of a kesdjan body is achieved through self-remembering, a
process facilitated by the teaching methods employed by Gurdjieff: his writings
(the trilogy All and Everything), the sacred dances or ‘Movements’, the music he
composed with Thomas de Hartmann (1885-1956), physical labour, fasting, and
‘inner work’ (esoteric exercises given to individuals and groups of pupils). Due to
the emphasis on disciplined self-improvement, Gurdjieff’s way is termed ‘the
Work’. In Gurdjieff’s system, humans are machines who pass through life asleep.
There are four states of consciousness; sleep, waking consciousness, self-
remembering, and objective consciousness, which accompanies the attainment
of a kesdjan or ‘higher-being’ body. In Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson (1950)
Gurdjieff traced a genealogy of his teachings to Atlantis, via ancient Babylon
(identifying it as a manifestation of the philosophia perennis and of the prisca
theologia, a doctrine that was pure in antiquity, but has been corrupted over
time). Importantly, these teaching techniques and spiritual exercises were not to
be revealed to those outside the Work.

Careful perusal of the pupil memoirs and transcriptions of Gurdjieff’s lectures
indicates what these spiritual exercises involved. Frank Sinclair, for example,
records that Louise March and his fiancée Beatrice were charged by Gurdjieff at
the Wellington Hotel on Christmas Day 1948 to go out and “draw in,” “steal,” or
“suck in” the energies exuded “by millions” of Christians in prayer. Louise March
described this as, ‘“I wish give real Christmas present. Imagine Christ.
Somewhere in space is.” Mr. Gurdjieff forms an oval with both his hands. “Make
contact, but to outside, periphery. Draw from there, draw in, I. Settle in you, Am.
Do every day. Wish to become Christ. Become. Be”.’9 Gurdjieff spoke of himself to
pupils as Christ and God, though rarely, and the development of the kesdjan body
suggests the dissolution of the boundary between the human I AM, and the I AM
of God. Joseph Azize has recently connected this spiritual process, which John
Godolphin Bennett (1897-1974) taught as the “Conscious Stealing” exercise, with
an exercise Gurdjieff taught to George Adie called “the Four Ideals,” in which
pupils “attempt to make contact with four ‘ideals’ (Christ, Buddha, Muhammad,
and Lama), and introduce into their (that is, the students’) own bodies certain
‘higher substances’ which are produced when worshippers pray or address
themselves to those ‘ideals’.”10

This article concerns Gurdjieff as a teacher of esotericism, the Work as an
esoteric tradition, and the Enneagram as an esoteric symbol. Antoine Faivre’s
six-point typology of Western Esotericism has been criticized but remains useful
in identifying esoteric aspects of the Work (whether they are Western or not is
outside the remit of this study). Faivre sought to resolve problems in the study of
esotericism, which “conjures up chiefly the idea of something ‘secret’… of
restricted realms of knowledge.” Esoteric religion may refer to achieving a higher
knowledge that “is identical to all who achieve it; experience of its attainment is
the proof or guarantee of the ‘transcendent unity of religions’.”11 Faivre’s first

9 Sinclair, Without Benefit of Clergy, 230-231.

10 Azize, ‘“The Four Ideals”’, 173-203.
11 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 5.
point is that, “[s]ymbolic and real correspondences … are said to exist among all
parts of the universe, both seen and unseen. (‘As above so below’). We find here
again the ancient idea of microcosm and macrocosm or, if preferred, the
principle of universal interdependence.” Correspondences mean the “universe is
a huge theater of mirrors, an ensemble of hieroglyphs to be decoded.”12

Pyotr Demianovich Ouspensky (1878-1947) wrote that Gurdjieff’s Enneagram
embodied the Laws of Seven and of Three, which undergird the cosmos. In terms
of the universe as macrocosm and the human as microcosm, Gurdjieff also
indicated that the Enneagram relates to spiritual development in humans, when
he stated that “simple symbols” including triangles, squares, five-pointed and six-
pointed stars “possess a definite meaning in relation to the inner development of
man; they show different stages on the path of man’s self-perfection and of the
growth of his being.”13 The second characteristic in Faivre’s typology is living
Nature: “Nature, seen, known, and experienced as essentially alive in all its parts,
often inhabited and traversed by a light or a hidden fire circulating through it.”14
Gurdjieff taught that the universe is energy in a state of constant change and
transformation (the moon strives to become an earth, the earth struggles to
become a sun, and so on). Faivre’s third characteristic is “a form of imagination
inclined to reveal and use mediations of all kinds, such as rituals, symbolic
images, mandalas, intermediary spirits.”15 In 1922 Gurdjieff choreographed and
taught the first Enneagram Movements at the Prieuré in Fontainebleau-Avon,
near Paris.16 The Enneagram symbol was thus enacted by his followers, precisely
as Faivre posits, as a mediation (many mediations were employed in the Work).

The fourth element for Faivre is “the experience of transmutation… the passage
from one plane to another… the modification of the subject in its very nature.”17
The development of the kesdjan body illustrates this principle, as the
development of a higher body changes the destiny of the individual. Soulless,
mechanical humans die and become food for the moon, but those who have a
kesdjan body continue after physical death.18 Fifth is the praxis of concordance,
which Faivre calls “a consistent tendency to try to establish common
denominators between two different traditions or even more, among all
traditions, in the hope of obtaining illumination, a gnosis, of superior quality.”19
Meetings With Remarkable Men (1963), Gurdjieff’s fictionalised autobiography,
presents him travelling with the Seekers of Truth to Egypt, the Gobi Desert, and
Central Asia, until Gurdjieff alone arrived at the monastery of the Sarmoung
Brotherhood, where he learned the sacred dances and reunited with his spiritual
adviser, Prince Lubovedsky.20 Gurdjieff called his teaching “esoteric Christianity,”
though Bennett believed its source was Sufism, while noting that Gurdjieff “came

12 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 10.

13 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 281.
14 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 11.
15 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 12.
16 Moore, ‘The Enneagram: A Developmental Study’, 2.
17 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 13.
18 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 189, 193, 256.
19 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 14.
20 Cusack, ‘An Enlightened Life in Text and Image’, 78-83.
very near to claiming he was an avatar, a cosmic individual incarnated to help
mankind” (a Hindu or Buddhist concept).21

Thus, the Work combines sources from many religions, but is a stand-alone
system that supersedes source traditions. The sixth of Faivre’s elements is an
“[e]mphasis on transmission [which] implies that an esoteric teaching can or
must be transmitted from master to disciple following a preestablished channel,
respecting a previously marked path.”22 In The Herald of Coming Good (1933),
Gurdjieff described the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man as
organised on three levels, esoteric, mesoteric, and exoteric. Pupils prepared to
enter the esoteric group, where they would be “initiated” theoretically and
practically by Gurdjieff.23 Gurdjieff also spoke of “initiating” pupils into exercises
and transmitting information that was “considered “secret,” and “for the ‘average
man’ might prove ruinous.”24 In a 1922 talk in London he stated,

[t]he theory of esotericism is that mankind consists of two circles: a large
outer circle, embracing all human beings, and a small circle of instructed
and understanding people at the center. Real instruction, which alone can
change us, can only come from this center, and the aim of this teaching is
to help us to prepare ourselves to receive such instruction.25

This is important for the later development of the Work, which is divided
between the ‘orthodox’ Gurdjieff Foundation, and heterodox groups with
lineages from non-Foundation teachers.26

For my argument, what is important is that the Gurdjieff Work in general, and
the Enneagram as model of reality in particular, may be regarded as techniques
to achieve spiritual healing, advancement or optimization. Jeff Levin defines
esoteric healing as “those systems of belief, practices, and teachings on health,
healing, and medicine that are associated with ancient, hidden, initiatory and/or
extant but nonmainstream spiritual paths and metaphysical traditions that
preserve secret wisdom on transcendental themes.”27 His pioneering article lists
eight groupings (ancient Mystery Schools, Kabbalah, Gnosticism, ‘Brotherhoods’
or graded initiatory orders, Eastern mystical traditions, Western mystical
traditions, Shamanism, and the New Age), that are congruent with the sources of
the New Age as identified by Wouter J. Hanegraaff. Hanegraaff positioned the
New Age as a secularized version of Western Esotericism.28 Gurdjieff’s esoteric

21 Bennett, Gurdjieff, 82.

22 Faivre, Access to Western Esotericism, 15.
23 Gurdjieff, The Herald of Coming Good, 38-39; Gurdjieff, Life is Real Only Then, 77-78.
24 Gurdjieff, Life is Real Only Then, 132.
25 Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World, 78. See also Ouspensky, In Search of the

Miraculous, 202, 204.

26 Thus groups linked to the Gurdjieff Foundation/ Institut Gurdjieff are considered

orthodox, and those linked to non-Foundation teachers like John Godolphin Bennett,
Francis Roles, Annie-Lou Staveley, and Maurice Nicoll are considered heterodox. See
Petsche, ‘A Gurdjieff Genealogy’, 49-79.
27 Levin, ‘Esoteric Healing Traditions’, 101.
28 Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture.
Enneagram similarly was secularized and acquired a therapeutic quality, when
transformed by non-Gurdjieffian teachers during the countercultural 1960s.

Gurdjieff was concerned to engage pupils in a process of spiritual transformation
that resembles theosis, becoming like God, in the Orthodox Christian tradition,
and mystical union with the divine as found in Sufism.29 In the post-Christian
West, the process of self-transformation is a core activity for many individuals,
whether in the context of institutional religion, de-institutionalised religion, free-
floating ‘spirituality’, or the secular realm (psychology or corporate motivational
techniques).30 The motif of optimization is relevant in that Gurdjieff taught that
humans were soulless meat, and working through his exercises offered the
possibility to develop a kesdjan body that would survive death. The attainment of
immortality after the body perishes is a state of spiritual optimization.

Gurdjieff and Gurdjieffians on the Enneagram

29 Happold, Mysticism, 127 and 220 for theosis, and 11, 96 and 250 for Sufism.
30 Aupers and Houtman, ‘The Sacralization of the Self’.
A comprehensive discussion of the Gurdjieff Enneagram is found in Ouspensky’s
In Search of the Miraculous (1949). The Enneagram is a circle containing a six-
sided shape and an equilateral triangle. The circumference of the circle is divided
into nine equal parts, and the resultant nine points are numbered from 1 to 9
clockwise, with the 9 in the ‘12 o’clock’ position. The numbers exemplify the Law
of Seven (which for Gurdjieff is the musical octave, containing seven fundamental
notes and two ‘semitone’ intervals, equalling nine points). 31 The points
representing the seven fundamental notes are labelled do, re, mi and so on.32 As
the Law of Seven determines that all processes in the universe follow a pattern of
seven unequal steps, Gurdjieff illustrated this by the “seven-tone scale.” The
scale consisted of two sets of larger intervals - do re mi and fa sol la ti - and two
smaller intervals, between mi and fa, and ti and the do of the next octave.33 He
taught that in all processes resistance is met at the smaller intervals, and
additional energy or a ‘shock’ is required for them to continue. Johanna Petsche
notes that the nine digits of the Enneagram do not replicate Gurdjieff’s seven
fundamental steps and two semitone or ‘shock’ intervals precisely, as the points
are equidistant on the circumference, while intervals between tones and
semitones vary.34

Yet, when Ouspensky described the Law of Seven he customarily presented it as
ninefold, in that it has seven fundamental notes and two semitone intervals
(identified as two extra notes).35 The first shock interval is placed at point 3 of
the Enneagram, between mi and fa (which reflects Gurdjieff’s Law of Seven), but
the second shock interval is placed at point 6, between sol and la, rather than at
point 8, between ti and do. Ouspensky noted this is “in the wrong place.”36 The
six-pointed symmetrical shape within the Enneagram is made by joining by
straight lines the six numbers around the circumference that comprise the
sequence of numbers that occur and repeat when 1 is divided by 7 (0.142857
repeated). The remaining points of the Enneagram – 9, 3, and 6 – form an
equilateral triangle symbolising the Law of Three, with points 3 and 6
correspond to the two shock intervals of the octave.37

Gurdjieff, as recorded by Ouspensky, claimed that the Enneagram was a symbol
of universal significance and great power:

the enneagram is a universal symbol. All knowledge can be included in the
enneagram and with the help of the enneagram it can be interpreted. And

31 What is presented here is Gurdjieff’s teaching on the octave. Strictly speaking, it is not

accurate to state that the two semitone intervals are additional to the seven notes (as
they are comprised within them). I thank George D. Chryssides for this, and also for the
comment that Gurdjieff’s use of tonic solfa reveals his ignorance of music notation (solfa
being designed for church singers who could not read music).
32 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 289.
33 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 124-126; Gurdjieff, Views From the Real World,

187-189.
34 Petsche, ‘Sacred Dance of the Enneagram’, 59.
35 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 134-135, 283
36 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 290-291.
37 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 290-291.
 in this connection only what a man is able to put into the enneagram does
he actually know, that is, understand. What he cannot put into the
enneagram he does not understand. For the man who is able to make use
of it, the enneagram makes books and libraries entirely unnecessary.
Everything can be included and read in the enneagram. A man may be
quite alone in the desert and he can trace the enneagram in the sand and
in it read the eternal laws of the universe. And every time he can learn
something new, something he did not know before. If two men who have
been in different schools meet, they will draw the enneagram and with its
help they will be able at once to establish which of them knows more and
which, consequently, stands upon which step, that is to say, which is the
elder, which is the teacher and which the pupil. The enneagram is the
fundamental hieroglyph of a universal language which has as many
different meanings as there are levels of men.38

This extract shows that the criticism that ‘orthodox’ Gurdjieff groups express,
towards both ‘unorthodox’ (but Gurdjieff-inspired) applications of the
Enneagram, and those uses proposed by teachers who were never in the Work
or claim other sources of authority, are justified and yet questionable. The
alleged significance of the Enneagram explains why ‘orthodox’ followers of
Gurdjieff’s teachings may believe that its misuse is dangerous. Yet the basic
objection, that the Enneagram was not used by Gurdjieff as a tool for personality
assessment, is only technically accurate. The claim that if “two men … [from]
different schools meet … draw the enneagram … they will be able at once to
establish which … which is the teacher and which the pupil” is compatible with
the claim that the Enneagram is a tool for analysing the psychological condition
(from Greek psyche, soul) and the spiritual status of individuals.

Gurdjieff also claimed that the Enneagram is inextricably related to motion and
processes of development. He stated that it embodied ‘objective knowledge’, a
significant claim in the Work context:

[t]he symbols that were used to transmit ideas belonging to objective
knowledge included diagrams of the fundamental laws of the universe and
they not only transmitted the knowledge itself but showed also the way to
it … The fundamental laws of triads and octaves penetrate everything and
should be studied simultaneously both in the world and in man. But in
relation to himself man is a nearer and a more accessible object of study …
in striving towards a knowledge of the universe, man should begin with
the study of himself and with the realization of the fundamental laws
within him … The transmission of the meaning of symbols to a man who
has not reached an understanding of them in himself is impossible.39

This statement establishes the Enneagram as a ‘genuinely’ esoteric symbol, in
that humans who have not undergone the necessary preparation cannot
apprehend its significance, and because it is a crucial expression of the “laws of

38 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 294.

39 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 280-281.
triads and octaves,” which manifest in the human individual and the physical
universe, confirming the microcosm-macrocosm relationship between the two.
Further, it connects the diagnostic Enneagram which can identify the level of a
person’s spiritual attainment with the developmental Enneagram that plots the
course of spiritual progress that a person might go on to make, through work
and “conscious suffering”.40 The process of spiritual advancement is related to
Gurdjieff’s emanative cosmology, with “different manifestations, and
concentrations of energy, which flow from the Absolute and which are all
interconnected.”41 Thus, the Enneagram functions as a map of the microcosm-
macrocosm relationship between humans and the physical universe.

As noted above, the Enneagram is based on the decimal fraction 0.142857, which
is obtained when 1 is divided by 7. Scottish Jungian psychologist and Work
teacher Maurice Nicoll (1884-1953) argued that the significance of dividing 1 by
7 is that, in Gurdjieff’s cosmological system, “[e]verything created is trying to
reach its Creator … the whole Ray [of Creation] taken as 7 notes, trying to find
solution and peace, passes into Absolute Unity as 7 into 1 … Since this diagram
[the Enneagram] is about Man and his possibilities, it begins with 7 and the
properties of this number in relation to Unity.42 Mathematically, the decimal
fraction 0.142857 has four intriguing qualities. First, when 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 are
divided by 7, the same six digits occur in different orders.

1/7 = 0.142857 repeated
2/7 = 0.285714 repeated
3/7 = 0.428571 repeated
4/7 = 0.571428 repeated
5/7 = 0.714285 repeated
6/7 = 0.857142 repeated43

Second, the sum of 1, 4, 2, 8, 5, 7 is 27, and the application of the so-called
‘theosophical addition’ (2+7) results in the number 9, which represents the
whole octave.44 Third, the sequence does not include 3, 6, or 9, the numbers that
form the separate equilateral triangle representing the Law of Three.45 Finally,
when the numbers 1, 4, 2, 8, 5 and 7 are joined in this order within a circle of
nine points, a symmetrical figure is formed (see the Enneagram).46

The importance of this numerical sequence for Gurdjieff is demonstrated by the
group of Movements called “Multiplications,” which mimic the relationships of
the six numbers. In these Movements, six dancers, representing the numbers 1,

40 Thomson, On Gurdjieff, 47.

41 Thomson, On Gurdjieff, 29.
42 Nicoll, Psychological Commentaries, 381-382.
43 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 289.
44 Goodman, Modern Numerology.
45 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 289-290.
46 These patterns are not mathematically significant or difficult. The number 7 is a

‘happy’ number. Further, 7 is the first happy prime. Happy numbers are “the numbers
whose 2- recurring digital invariant sequences have period 1.” See Weisstein, ‘Happy
Number’.
4, 2, 8, 5, and 7, stand in a row. As they move, they change places in the row in
exact accordance with the numerical patterns that result when the numbers 1 to
6 are divided by 7. If one person makes an error, the structure of the Movement
dissolves.47 Gurdjieff embodied these six decimal numbers as dancers, and
reflected through movement the interplay between them48 The basic Gurdjieffian
conception of the Enneagram is that, if one has knowledge of the Work and
administers ‘conscious shocks’ at the correct times, one can assist the
development and transformation of finer energy or matter within the
organism.49 This is key to Gurdjieff’s spiritual objective (which may be termed
‘esoteric optimisation’): the achievement of a kesdjan body and attainment of the
state of objective consciousness.50

Ouspensky states that when this system of digestion is applied to the
Enneagram, point 3 of the Enneagram stands for the interval between mi and fa
of the ‘food’ octave, where an automatic shock occurs when the ‘air’ octave
enters at do.51 Point 6 then stands for the interval between mi and fa of the ‘air’
octave, where a ‘conscious shock’ (self-remembering) allows the ‘air’ and
‘impressions’ octaves, which have been halted, to continue.52 In other words,
where point 9 on the Enneagram represents the do that begins the ‘food’ octave,
point 3 is the do that starts the ‘air’ octave, and point 6 is the do that starts the
‘impressions’ octave. These all function as shocks that allow the octaves to
continue transforming. This provides an insight into the meaning of the triangle
in the Enneagram, as each of its points can represent, according to Ouspensky’s
scheme, both a ‘shock’ and a do, or new octave. Ouspensky designates the shock
intervals of the Law of Seven “the bearers of new directions,”53 and it can be
posited that the three points of the triangle represent the possibility of new
‘offshoot’ Enneagrams, which may clarify a gnomic pronouncement by Gurdjieff,
“[t]herefore do can emerge from its circle and enter into orderly correlation with
another circle, that is, play that role in another cycle which, in the cycle under
consideration, is played by the ‘shocks’ filling the ‘intervals’ in the octave.”54

Ouspensky hypothesised that the Enneagram may be astronomical in nature, and
suggested it may refer to the flow of blood in the human body. He identified the
seven points (excluding 3 and 6) with the Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter,
Venus, and Saturn (and the days of the week, beginning with Sunday).55 These
speculations did not go far, but are congruent with Gurdjieff’s teaching, as they
are respectively cosmological and human-centred, reinforcing the macrocosm-
microcosm relations inherent in the Enneagram. Although Ouspensky never
practiced or taught Movements (his version of the Work was cerebral not

47 Petsche, Gurdjieff and Music, 199.

48 See Anon, ‘Gurdjieff Sacred Dance - Ol Bog Mek Multiplication’.
49 Gurdjieff, All and Everything First Series, 144-147, 763; Ouspensky, In Search of the

Miraculous, 188-189.
50 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 141-145.
51 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 192.
52 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 378-379.
53 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 134, 285.
54 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 290.
55 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 378.
embodied), he recorded Gurdjieff’s insistence that “a motionless Enneagram is a
dead symbol; the living symbol is in motion … Without taking part in these
exercises [Enneagram Movements], without occupying some kind of place in
them, [it] is almost impossible to understand the Enneagram.”56

Oscar Ichazo: The Post_Gurdjieff Enneagram of Personality

Whether the Enneagram originated with Gurdjieff is important for the
transmission and legitimacy of the post-Gurdjieffian Enneagram. James Webb, a
non-Gurdjieffian, in The Harmonious Circle (1980) claimed the genealogy of the
Enneagram lay in the Kabbalistic Sephiroth, via the Ars Magna (“The Great Art,” c.
1305-1308) of Ramon Lull (c. 1232-1315), and the Arithmologia (1665) of
Athanasius Kircher (1601-1680).57 Gurdjieff biographer James Moore rejected
this, asserting the Enneagram “was intrinsic and peculiar to Gurdjieff’s system,
and unpromulgated before him.”58 Sophia Wellbeloved noted that that the
turning nature of Gurdjieff’s “Enneagram” Movements may indicate Dervish
(Sufi) origins for the symbol, 59 but Mark Sedgwick rejects the Sufi
identification.60 Bolivian Oscar Ichazo (b. 1931), founder of the Arica School, also
rejected the alleged Sufi origins of the Enneagram: “I know Sufism extensively -
I’ve practiced traditional zhikr, prayer, meditation – and I know realized Sufi
sheiks. It is not part of their theoretical framework. They couldn’t care less about
the Enneagon [Enneagram].”61 Yet Helen Palmer and Don Richard Riso (1946-
2012), among other popularisers of the Enneagram, continue to tout its ‘Sufi’
origins.

The Enneagram of personality began in the Work; both Bennett, and Rodney
Collin (b. Collin-Smith, 1909-1956), a student of Ouspensky, expanded upon
Gurdjieff’s Enneagram in different ways. Bennett, at Coombe Springs, attempted
to materialise the Enneagram in the Djameechoonatra, a nine-sided theatre for
the performance of Movements (no longer extant).62 He also discussed the
Enneagram in his magnum opus, The Dramatic Universe (1956). Collin speculated
on the Enneagram in The Theory of Eternal Life (1950), in which human life is
divided into nine periods, which Collin claimed were related on a logarithmic
scale. Each period is employed to develop a higher function, which led Webb to
argue that, “[t]he [E]nneagram is clearly in the back of his mind.”63 Collin’s The
Theory of Celestial Influence (1954) related Ouspensky’s planetary Enneagram to
Gurdjieff’s sparse references to “types.” Collin suggested that individuals could
develop from the type of their birth to the next type on the Enneagram. Thus, a
Lunar type could develop the warmth of a Venusian type, the Venusian could
develop the speed of a Mercurial type, and so on.64 Wellbeloved has observed

56 Ouspensky, In Search of the Miraculous, 294-295.

57 Webb, The Harmonious Circle, 505-519.
58 Moore, ‘The Enneagram: A Developmental Study’, 2.
59 Wellbeloved, Gurdjieff, 66.
60 Sedgwick, Western Sufism, 424.
61 Patterson, Taking With the Left Hand, 24.
62 Blake, ‘Gurdjieff and the Legomonism of “Objective Reason”’, 259.
63 Webb, The Harmonious Circle, 479.
64 Collin, The Theory of Celestial Influence.
that this notion of personal development via the points of the Enneagram is
central to the functioning of the “enneagram of personality.”65 Another important
contribution of Collin was that he emigrated to Mexico and died in Peru, and his
works appeared in Spanish in the 1950s (thus Gurdjieff’s ideas were circulated in
Latin America at an early date).

In fact, Gurdjieff had outlined a theory of human “types” and associated the
Enneagram with astrology, however sketchily. In The Herald of Coming Good he
claimed that there were “28 ‘categories-of-types’ existing on Earth, as they were
established in ancient times.”66 Further, he told Fritz Peters that centuries ago
astrology was a “really genuine science,”67 and in 1920 in Constantinople a
drawing of the Enneagram was undertaken by Gurdjieff’s pupils, in which the
four evangelists’ symbols – the man, the lion, the bull, and the eagle – were
included in the design and connected to the centres. Wellbeloved noted these are
also the four fixed signs of the zodiac (Aquarius, Leo, Taurus, and Scorpio).68 She
suggested that “if the [E]nneagram is read as a symbol of the zodiac, then an
astrological use of it for a typology of people is immediately obvious and
understandable.”69

After these initial unorthodox Gurdjieffian speculations the Enneagram broke
free and was adopted by a range of thinkers, particularly from corporate culture
and business systems. In 1963 Clarence E. King identified the Enneagram at
work in Vauxhall Motors, and in 1966 Kenneth Pledge connected it with Isaac
Newton’s prism deviation experiment, and corresponding spectrometer
experiment. In 1978 Irmis Popoff related the Enneagram to consumer product
testing, and in 1987 Saul Kuchinsky applied it across the managerial spectrum.70
Business applications of the Enneagram focused on personality dynamics in
corporate teams; this focus on personality also characterised the work of the
most significant non-Work exponent of the Enneagram, Oscar Ichazo.

Ichazo’s early life is as unverified as Gurdjieff’s; as a child he allegedly
experienced revelations and out-of-body states. Ichazo claimed as a youth to
have studied philosophy, Zen meditation, yoga, and shamanism, and to have
experimented with hallucinogens. In 1950 he joined a group in Buenos Aires
(possibly a Work group), and studied Theosophy, Sufism, and Kabbalah. The
chronology of his life is difficult to reconstruct, but he states that he travelled to
Hong Kong, India, and Tibet to study yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Confucianism,
Sufism, and alchemy. He may have joined a Sufi school in Afghanistan, before
returning to La Paz, Bolivia.71 Ichazo began teaching in 1956 and gave his first
public lecture to the Institute of Applied Psychology in Santiago, Chile in 1968.

65 Wellbeloved, Gurdjieff, 64-65.

66 Gurdjieff, The Herald of Coming Good, 23.
67 Peters, Boyhood with Gurdjieff and Gurdjieff Remembered, 321.
68 Prior to becoming a pupil of Gurdjieff P. D. Ouspensky published The Symbolism of the

Tarot (1913). However, he did not explicitly link the Enneagram to either the Tarot or
Astrology.
69 Wellbeloved, Gurdjieff, 64.
70 Moore, ‘The Enneagram: A Developmental Study’, 4.
71 Lilly and Hart, ‘The Arica Training’, 331.
He moved to Arica, Chile, and founded the Arica Institute the same year. His most
notable pupils were the Chilean Claudio Naranjo (b. 1932), and the American
neuroscientist and dolphin researcher John C. Lilly (1915-2001). According to
Lilly and Joseph E. Hart, Naranjo left Ichazo’s group when a more intensive phase
began and he was “separated from further training.”72 William Patrick Patterson
claims that during work with Ichazo Naranjo went into a satori state and was
angered when Ichazo brought him out of it; the resultant tension led to Naranjo
being expelled seven months later.73

In 1971 Ichazo moved the Arica Institute to New York, and centres were opened
in San Francisco and Santa Monica. Basic Arica training was followed by two
advanced courses, “The Temple” and “Open Path” (specifically to train Arica
teachers). Arica developed a communal lifestyle that tended to promote sexual
freedom and the avoidance of exclusive unions, with childcare viewed as a
collective responsibility. Alcohol, pork, crab, and addictive drugs were banned,
and when new exercises were introduced members of the group refrained from
sex to raise the energy levels for these spiritual exertions.74 The Arica School still
exists, though its membership is small, and fewer training courses are offered.75

Ichazo’s system exhibited Gurdjieffian influences, which he explained in a rare
public statement about the group he joined at nineteen. He claimed this group
exposed him to Zen, Sufi and Kabbalistic ideas, and used techniques that he later
found in the Work.76 Resemblances included a model of the human being that
involved three centres (intellectual, emotional, and movement/instinct),
exercises aimed at inducing a state of mindfulness that extinguished mental
“chatter,”77 and the concept of “triadic reasoning,” which involved overcoming
duality by means of a third element.78 Ichazo stated he was a master in an
initiated line of succession, that he was in contact with previous masters of the
tradition, and that members of the group could contact angels, archangels and
other higher entities through meditation. These entities bestowed baraka
(“blessing”, divine energy) upon the group. It has been noted by researchers as
diverse as Moore and Andrew Dell’Olio that Ichazo has denied that he owed
anything to Gurdjieff, of whom he said, “there is not one single original ‘idea’ of
any importance in the entire work of Mr Gurdjieff … I read All and Everything and
I found that Mr Gurdjieff was, in fact, not only mediocre but a very bad writer
with no idea of composition or how to develop and present his themes.”79
However, Claudio Naranjo, speaking at Esalen in 1970, said Ichazo had
“intimated that he had the same teachers as Gurdjieff and belonged to the same
esoteric school, the Sarmoung Brotherhood, and the idea that Ichazo was a

72 Lilly and Hart, ‘The Arica Training’, 331-332.

73 Patterson, Taking with the Left Hand, 28.
74 Lilly and Hart, ‘The Arica Training’, 349-350.
75 Dell’Olio, ‘The Arica School’, 154.
76 Palmer, The Enneagram, 47.
77 Lilly and Hart, ‘The Arica Training’, 332-333, 339, 342-345, 350.
78 Dell’Olio, ‘The Arica School’, 160-162.
79 Patterson, Taking with the Left Hand, 42.
‘continuation’ of Gurdjieff was a chief factor in the attraction of many of those
who came to Arica.”80

This raises the issue of Ichazo’s transformation of the Enneagram. Riso gives
Ichazo’s sources for the Enneagram as Plotinus’ Enneads, Pythagoras, and the
Kabbalistic Sephirot.81 Ichazo’s Enneagram (sometimes called the “Enneagon”)
looks similar to that of Gurdjieff, but he taught that it was a model of human
personality and its potential for development and growth. Ichazo argued that
there were nine “ego fixations” (Indolence, Resentment, Flattery, Vanity,
Melancholy, Stinginess, Cowardice, Planning, and Vengeance) assigned to the
nine points around the circle of the Enneagram, with Indolence in the 9 (or 12
o’clock) position.82 Due to ego, individuals are incapable of determining their
own ego fixation, and the ego leads them into ego-fixation traps, or habitual ways
of acting. Individuals remain in their fixation traps until they realise they must
escape. These traps, which can also be seen as points on the Enneagram, are:
Seeker (9); Perfection (1); Freedom (2); Efficiency (3); Authenticity (4);
Observer (5); Security (6); Idealism (7); and Justice (8). When people realise
they must escape their ego-fixation trap, they are prepared for the “idea” that
will free them from the trap and pull them into “essence,” though experiencing
the idea is dependent on baraka, which a person can draw into his or her self
through meditation and other exercises. There are nine ideas, which are all given
the descriptor “Holy”: Love (9), Perfection (1), Freedom (2), Hope (3), Originality
(4), Omniscience (5), Faith (6), Work (7), and Truth (8).83

Breaking the hold of the ego on the emotional centre (the ‘Oth-heart’) yields
awareness of one’s predominant passion, and how to counteract it with the
appropriate virtue. There are nine passions and virtues. The passions are:
Laziness (9), Anger (1), Pride (2), Deceit (3), Envy (4), Avarice (5), Fear (6),
Gluttony (7), Excess (8). The virtues are: Action (9), Serenity (1), Humility (2),
Truthfulness (3), Equanimity (4), Detachment (5), Courage (6), Sobriety (7),
Innocence (8).84 The hold of the ego over the movement centre (the ‘Kath’) in
Arica is loosened through physical exercises, diet, and so on.85 Other Enneagrams
relating to social relationships, conservation and syntony are also given. A
significant difference in the way that Ichazo and his successors view the
Enneagram is that, rather than restricting it to diagnosis and trajectories relating
to spiritual attainment, it is a plastic model for problem-solving across human
life. Where Gurdjieff insisted on the objective value of the Enneagram and taught
it as an esoteric system of spiritual diagnosis, Ichazo secularised the Enneagram
and released it from the initiatory model of the Work. In doing so, he opened it
up to the subjectivisation apparent in popular treatments like those of Riso and
Palmer.86

80 Dell’Olio, ‘The Arica School’, 160-161.

81 Riso and Hudson, Personality Types, 18.
82 Lilly and Hart, ‘The Arica Training’, 333-334.
83 Lilly and Hart, ‘The Arica Training’, 334-335.
84 The numbers are used for clarity; there is no evidence that Ichazo used numbers in this way.
85 Lilly and Hart, ‘The Arica Training’, 335-337.
86 Lilly and Hart, ‘The Arica Training’, 347-349.
The Enneagram of psychological optimisation came to the fore in the work of
Naranjo, rather than Ichazo (although Arica is a ‘human potential’ movement
with both genealogical and sociological connections with the contemporary
‘wellness’ industry). Naranjo, an anthropologist and psychiatrist, was a research
associate at the University of Chile, a Guggenheim Fellow at the University of
California, Berkeley and held a Fulbright scholarship at Harvard in the 1960s. He
was a friend of Carlos Castaneda, and, after receiving positive assessments of
Ichazo’s teaching, Naranjo studied with him at the Arica School in 1970 and
1971. Naranjo is credited with grounding the descriptions of the Enneagram
types in field research, and correlating them with psychiatric and psychological
categories (histrionic, compulsive, avoidant or schizoid, and so on) by
interviewing participants at his lectures, and using his skills as a psychiatrist and
Gestalt therapist.87 Naranjo was an associate of Esalen, a crucible of the Human
Potential Movement, and of Berkeley’s psychological community, particularly the
Center for Biochemical Dynamics where he had researched both typology and
the effects of hallucinogens.88

Naranjo founded two schools; the first was the Seekers After Truth (SAT) in
1971, which recalls Gurdjieff’s ‘Seekers of Truth’ in Meetings with Remarkable
Men. Members signed an agreement not to teach what Naranjo transmitted to
them (a modern ‘take’ on the non-disclosure of esoteric doctrines to the
uninitiated). The second, more informal group, to which Helen Palmer belonged,
did not sign such agreements.89 It is with Riso and Palmer that the Enneagram
permanently departed the Work lineage of Gurdjieff, and entered the
marketplace of the personal growth, wellness, and happiness industries.

The Enneagram of Personality as Esoteric Therapy

Palmer acknowledged Naranjo in her presentation of the Enneagram, noting that
he made it into a democratised psychological tool, bringing it out of the domain
of “those who know”, and permitting ordinary people to identify their types by
reading about their “similars.”90 Palmer was taught by Naranjo and his sometime
romantic partner, the Gurdjieffian Kathleen Riordan Speeth, whereas Riso was
introduced to the Enneagram by American Jesuits in the early 1970s. Father
Robert Ochs studied with Naranjo, and by 1972 the Enneagram was taught
informally in Jesuit centres, particularly at the University of California, Berkeley
and Loyola University, Chicago. Ochs adopted Naranjo’s connection of the
Enneagram to the Christian seven deadly sins (which echoed Gurdjieff’s pupil C.
S. Nott’s connection of the concept of “chief feature” – a key term in Gurdjieff’s
approach to types – with the seven deadly sins).91 Initially, Ochs demanded
secrecy from those he taught, and Father Pat O’Leary told William Patrick
Patterson, “[t]here was a great emphasis on secrecy – and a total violation of
same. Bob taught that we were not to pass it on. And here he was passing it on.

87 Riso and Hudson, Personality Types, 20.

88 Patterson, Taking With the Left Hand, 26-27.
89 Patterson, Taking With the Left Hand, 31.
90 Palmer, The Enneagram, 51-52.
91 Nott, Further Teachings of Gurdjieff, 87.
And, of course, we glibly talked about it to anyone who’d listen.”92 O’Leary made
the Enneagram public, co-authoring the first popular book on the subject, which
was followed by books by Riso, Palmer, Naranjo, and others. In 1989 the Arica
Institute claimed copyright infringement, and Ichazo sued O’Leary and other
Enneagram authors, accusing them of a “brutal and massive misappropriation,
and with the worst of manners. They say they have discovered some old Sufi
tradition. What the hell do they mean by this, I would like to know. The entire
theory originated in me exclusively … What I want is a full explanation with
public acknowledgement.”93

Riso and Palmer both simplified the Enneagram and presented an accessible,
vernacular version of Ichazo’s and Naranjo’s teaching. The revised edition of
Riso’s Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery (1987) claimed
that readers can apply the personality descriptions in many different situations:
psychologists and psychiatrists will use the Enneagram to diagnose the problems
of their clients more accurately; lawyers will be better able to understand their
clients; personnel directors and businesspeople will become better managers
through greater awareness of their employees’ personality types and so on. The
book promises that “gradually and in ways we do not expect, we are transformed
into persons who are fuller, more life-affirming, and self-transcending.” 94
Because types are fixed, people do not change or develop from one type to
another, but “[t]he ideal is to become your best self, not to envy the strengths and
potentials of others.”95 Riso used certain terms from the Gurdjieff vocabulary,
including “false personality,” “essence,” the “habitual mechanisms of our
personality,” and the “habitual nature of many of our thoughts, reactions, and
behaviors.”96

Riso’s Enneagram groups people into three triads, feeling, thinking, and
instinctive (clearly based on Gurdjieff’s “three centres”):

Feeling Triad
2. The Helper: encouraging, demonstrative, possessive
3. The Motivator: ambitious, pragmatic, image-conscious
4. The Individualist: sensitive, self-absorbed, depressive

Thinking Triad
5. The Investigator: perceptive, cerebral, provocative
6. The Loyalist: committed, dutiful, suspicious
7. The Enthusiast: spontaneous, fun-loving, excessive

Instinctive Triad
8. The Leader: self-confident, assertive, confrontational
9. The Peacemaker: pleasant, easy-going, complacent

92 Patterson, Taking With the Left Hand, 33.

93 Patterson, Taking With the Left Hand, 34.
94 Riso and Hudson, Personality Types, 10.
95 Riso and Hudson, Personality Types, 33.
96 Riso and Hudson, Personality Types, 46-47.
 1. The Reformer: rational, idealistic, orderly.97

For Riso, people are a combination of their type, and one of the two types
adjacent to it on the Enneagram’s circumference (“wings”) that may complement
or negatively impact the overall personality. Some people exhibit strong “wing”
influences, others slight. As people fluctuate among the healthy, average, and
unhealthy traits of their type, Riso’s Enneagram functions to assist them to
develop into the “best self” possible, given their basic and wing types. The lines
joining the types in the Enneagram denote the Direction of Integration (healthy,
self-actualization) and the Direction of Disintegration (unhealthy, neurosis) for
each type. As a person becomes healthier or unhealthier, she or he moves in
different directions: movement in the sequence 1-4-2-8-5-7-1 is the movement
of Disintegration and 1-7-5-8-2-4-1, Integration.98

Palmer’s Enneagram is similar to Riso’s, and her The Enneagram: Understanding
Yourself and the Others in Your Life (1991), first published in 1988, consists of
extended descriptions of the nine types. The early chapters cast the Enneagram
in broadly Gurdjieffian terms (she discusses his ‘Toasts to the Idiots’ dinner-table
ritual and notes Gurdjieff’s suspicion of personality and preference for essence)
and she cites Gurdjieff, Ouspensky, Nott, and Kenneth Walker. Yet her aim, in
presenting the Enneagram as a technique for achieving psychological health, is
far from Gurdjieff’s. She posits the Enneagram offers people the opportunity to:

build a working relationship with yourself. You can count on the
experience of your similars to guide you, and you can discover the
conditions that will make you thrive rather than continue to play out
neurotic trends. The most important reason … [is] so you can lessen your
own human suffering. The second reason … is so you can understand other
people as they are to themselves … This understanding of others can help
work teams be efficient, infuse romance with magic, and help families to
reunite.99

Palmer and Riso offer a post-1960s vision of a ‘healthy’ life based on personal
fulfilment, in sexual, familial, social and career terms. This is perhaps the best
indicator of the distance between the Enneagram in Gurdjieff’s teachings and the
Enneagram of psychology and management; whereas Gurdjieff disdained
happiness, personal fulfilment, and material comfort as unworthy spiritual goals,
and taught an uncompromising doctrine of the end of the human in death if work
and “conscious suffering” were not pursued to develop a kesdjan body, the
contemporary spiritual climate of the West has shifted radically to seeking the
perfected self in this life; hence Riso’s notion of the “best self” being the highest
goal seemingly offered, and Palmer’s breathless promise of improved romantic
relationships, familial affection, and workplace productivity (somewhat debased
‘spiritual’ goals, if not more properly classified as material ambitions).100

97 Riso and Hudson, Personality Types, 7-34.

98 Riso and Hudson, Personality Types, 47-48.
99 Palmer, The Enneagram, 9.
100 Patterson noticed that in The Enneagram Palmer thanked the late Henry John

Sinclair, Lord Pentland (1907-1984), the senior Work teacher in America. Patterson met
Conclusion

It is argued that the Enneagram was introduced and articulated by Gurdjieff as
an esoteric model or technique of optimisation. It is integral to the Work, the
purpose of which was the development of a kesdjan (‘higher being’) body, which
would survive physical death. To enable this, Gurdjieff taught a system that
emphasized ‘self-remembering’ and the cultivation of essence through the
extinction of personality, through his writings, the Movements (in particular the
‘Enneagram’ and ‘Multiplications’ Movements), the Gurdjieff-de Hartmann music,
physical labour, and esoteric exercises (‘inner work’). 101 Bennett, an
‘unorthodox’ pupil of Gurdjieff, stated that “after a teacher’s death, pupils
inevitably break into separate factions, of which there are three kinds: the
literalists, who keep everything as it was and change nothing; the deviants, who
go off on their own path; and the developers, who are prepared to see orthodox
forms changed and distorted so that something new might grow.”102 After
Gurdjieff’s death the Work divided into the orthodox ‘Foundation’ groups,
organised by Jeanne de Salzmann (1889-1990) in the early 1950s. These
‘literalist’ groups preserved the esoteric transmission of Gurdjieff’s teaching, the
Enneagram and the Movements.

Among the ‘developers’ are Bennett, Nicoll, and Collin, who all expanded on the
Enneagram. In the case of the Enneagram, those whom Bennett termed the
‘deviants’ are Ichazo and Naranjo, who probably learned about Gurdjieff through
Collin’s publications that were translated into Spanish, and the multitude of
North Americans (O’Leary, Riso, Palmer, and others) who followed Ichazo’s and
Naranjo’s lead in psychologizing, secularizing, and popularizing the Enneagram,
which in the twenty-first century might still be categorized as a technique or
model of wellbeing or psychological health, but one rooted in and connected to
corporate workplaces rather than the Gurdjieff tradition.103 The Enneagram was
once unique to the Work; it is now public, and, in the manner of exotericised
esoteric teachings, is properly classified as part of the wellness and happiness
industry, a quasi-spiritual strand of the New Age.

Palmer to discuss this. He wrote of the encounter: “I asked her whether she indeed knew
‘Sir Pentland’ well … she quickly recounted how he had called her in the early 1970s,
saying he had read her psychic predictions in Ramparts magazine and wanted to meet
her. They had lunch shortly afterward during which Palmer said she told him of taking a
class in the enneagram of personality fixations taught by … Naranjo … Pentland, she
recounted, told her that little of real value could come from studying the symbol
divorced as it was from the Fourth Way teaching of which it was one of the principal
symbols. Rather than continue her studies, he advised her to enter the teaching. Palmer
said she refused. ‘Do you think,’ I asked, ‘that he would have approved your publishing a
book on the enneagram?’ ‘No,’ she admitted, not missing a beat, ‘he probably wouldn’t
have.’ My question was answered …”. Patterson, Taking With the Left Hand, 11.
101 Blake, The Intelligent Enneagram, 1-20.
102 Petsche, ‘A Gurdjieff Genealogy’, 52.
103 See Wagner and Walker, ‘Reliability and Validity Study of a Sufi Personality

Typology’; and Sutton, Allinson, and Williams, ‘Personality Type and World-Related
Outcomes’.
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